For this post, I’m just going to hash out some ideas for the physical computing final.
Our assignment is to make an “interactive system”, meaning we should think about it as a feedback loop. Instead of having just one interaction (user input, to device output), can it create two-way communication?
IDEAS:
Not sure if this can be turned into an interactive system, but I like the idea of revisiting my undergraduate thesis. I have actually submitted an IRB for a second experiment to jump off the original thesis. Using eye-tracking, my advisor and I were interested in understanding how art training affects the way humans look at art. It would be super cool to create this eye-tracking device that paints. What I mean is that I predict, that expert artist often view art imagining the process and how they would create it themselves. I predict that a representation of their eye movements might look different than people who don’t have art training.
The result would be different “drawings” that represent the eye movements. Perhaps different colors for each part (are the looking at the edges of something, the middle.
Since I also used protocol analysis, this technique could be used again but this time something is taking the dictation as it happens. Maybe certain words trigger a different output.
Perhaps this is too ambitious and I could table this for my thesis, or maybe it’s a combination of ICM and PCOMP? I don’t know, but I think it could be interesting, and I would love to have ITP collab with the Cognitive Science department at Vassar somehow.
I just really want to create a giant projection of water on the floor and I want people to be able to move the water with their hands, or touch a fish. Is this even PComp idk?
Maybe I can expand on beat visualization and make it an entire room installation. Could delve into the world of the psychological phenomenon of synesthesia – associating colors or smells to different sounds.
Mental health has really been on my mind lately. I don’t really know how to incorporate that, but it would be very meaningful to me to crate a device that provides comfort to those who are struggling. There is a lot of stigma around mental health perhaps because humans are so judgemental, maybe if you talk to a machine that can take away that fear? or maybe it makes one more uncomfortable? Would love to expand of this somehow: Sit in a chair that warms to provide comfort.
Giant interactive rube goldberg machine